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HTC, Motorola claim to not follow Apple in throttling CPU performance as batteries age

Last week, Apple confirmed that it degrades CPU performance on older smartphones as batteries age. The iPhone maker was heavily criticized for not being more transparent about the decision and now its competitors claim that they do not follow similar practices on Android devices.

Earlier this month, users began noticing how their iPhones were slowing down over time, with benchmarking service Geekbench later concluding from its data that after iOS 10.2.1 last year the iPhone 6, 6s, and SE encountered performance slow downs. Meanwhile, the same was noticed with iOS 11.2 for the iPhone 7 earlier this month.

Apple eventually came out to confirm that the practice was designed to counter how lithium-ion batteries age over time and no longer provide the necessary power. As such, to prevent devices from shutting down mid-use, CPU performance is capped in line with the state of the battery.

A smart solution, however, Apple did little to publicly inform end users about this practice, thus gaining mass criticism.

In comments to The Verge, HTC and Motorola have come out to state that CPU performance is not throttled on its devices as batteries age. Other OEMs, like Samsung, LG, Sony, and Google, are in the process of responding.

Given that this practices has already garnered several lawsuits against Apple, comments from all the major Android vendors will begin to paint a picture of whether performance throttling is a widespread practice in the smartphone industry. If it isn’t, Apple would be the standout and it would beg asking why the other companies are seemingly immune.


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Avatar for Abner Li Abner Li

Editor-in-chief. Interested in the minutiae of Google and Alphabet. Tips/talk: abner@9to5g.com